1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to network management. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to reducing the number of management systems required to manage multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) virtual private networks (VPNs).
2. Background Information
In order for service providers to manage customer networks, the service provider connects to the customer network elements to be managed via the TCP/IP protocol. A network element is a device such as a router or switch. Managing these devices typically requires the customer network element to have a unique IP address, a 32 bit value.
Customers can, through what is known as RFC1918 addressing, use private (reusable) addresses within their own networks, creating the potential for duplicate IP addresses. Duplicate IP addresses create a serious identity problem because network management systems (NMSs) use the IP addresses to identify the managed end devices. Today, most network management systems use existing tables in the operating system (typically the “host” file) to associate host names (equipment/site names) with IP addresses. In any given host computer, the IP addresses must be unique to point to discrete network elements. Once an IP address for a given site is known, it can be used by normal network processes to forward data packets using established IP forwarding rules.
When customers use the same blocks of private (reusable) IP addresses for their internal networks, service providers need to deploy separate element management systems (EMSs) (or NMSs) and access routers or deploy complex address translation techniques to connect to these devices uniquely. If enough customers were to use the same private IP address blocks, the possibility exists that the service provider would need to deploy a different management platform to support each customer. While this solution works, each additional network management system increases the overall costs to the service provider and adds to the complexity of the overall management solution. There are additional difficulties with routing of these duplicate addresses that also increase the infrastructure costs.
However, network management systems still cannot handle overlapping IP addresses.